Strike to delay trains, CN says Grain producers fear cash crunch
Winnipeg Free Press - Kevin Rollason
February 21, 2004
Canadian National Railway Co. warned its customers to expect train delays as managers scrambled to keep Canada's largest railway on schedule yesterday after 5,000 workers went on strike. And the Canadian Wheat Board said it is closely monitoring the strike by CN Rail workers across the country to make sure its grain shipments don't go off the rails.
Jim Pietryk, a CWB spokesman, said yesterday the railway is hoping the strike will be finished quickly so that there is no disruption to the transportation of grain.
"We're going to be tracking this day by day," he said. "CN is an important rail company for us to move farmers' grain west and east. For us it's important for the grain to continue to move."
CN Rail, Canada's biggest freight carrier, transports up to 1,800 rail cars a week full of grain -- about half of the CWB's total shipments -- and is the only rail company that services the Port of Prince Rupert in British Columbia.
It also hauls everything from auto parts, chemicals and wheat to pulp and paper, coal and lumber between Canada's east and west coasts and down to the Gulf of Mexico.
Pietryk said the wheat board also uses CP Rail to ship grain, but each of the rail companies serves distinct parts of the western provinces.
David Rolfe, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers and a grain and oilseeds farmer near Elgin, said a strike by CN Rail is a blow to grain growers.
"Considering everything else happening in the industry, it probably was the very last thing we needed," Rolfe said.
"Producers do have a crop to deliver, and there are cash flow problems with just about every commodity. If we can't get our grain through it would add to our stress."
More than 1,300 workers in Winnipeg joined about 3,700 other workers across the country on the picket lines at midnight Thursday after they rejected a proposed three-year deal with annual wage increases of three per cent.
The workers, whose average salary is about $45,000, include staff who maintain the trains and rail cars, deal with customers and do safety inspections.
CN spokesman Mark Hallman said managers in Winnipeg will do the routine maintenance work normally done by the employess now out on the picket lines.
"Passenger trains are not affected by the strike. There are no plans for negotiations at this time," he said.
But Hallman said there could be some delays in rail operations.
As he walked back and forth in front of the barricaded gates of CN Rail's Transcona maintenance facility, where major overhauls of locomotive engines and other work is done, Gary Gledhill, a 37-year employee, said pension improvements are the main issue for the older workers.
"Workers at the other rail company (CP Rail) do the same work and have a better pension," Gledhill said.
"There's no possible way managers can do the work here. For a short while, maybe, but then things will suffer."
A few kilometres away, at the picket line outside the Symington Yard, a worker said labour relations have been strained in recent months. He said a number of incidents have contributed to the tension, including the suspension of some workers for a week for not wearing safety goggles on the job.
Doug Olshewski, the national representative for the Canadian Auto Workers, said CN Rail "has become the leanest, meanest rail operator in North America, and the only way to do that is to step on people's toes, and they have been doing that for 10 years." "People here have had enough and it's payback time."
A third picket line has been set up outside the downtown CityPlace building, where CN has a call centre.
Meanwhile, in the House of Commons, Elmwood-Transcona NDP MP Bill Blaikie, whose riding includes the bulk of CN Rail's local operations, said the strike has the potential to be ugly and the government needs to take an aggressive, hands-on approach.
"The reason for this is quite simple. CN top management is now primarily American and cares not what it does to Canadian workers, communities, values or traditions. Replacement workers, or scabs, are not something that was ever contemplated in the context of past rail strikes. This time, CN is actively training scabs or, as in Toronto already, bringing in American workers from Illinois to help break the strike.
"This is outrageous, and if this Liberal government, which privatized CN in the first place, allows this to happen, then the prime minister might as well run up the American flag and admit that our largest railway is owned and operated by interests and values that come from somewhere else."
Go to Bill's special CN Strike section.
